I usually have the best luck with pike later in the season when the weeds grow taller, in about 8 foot of water. This year my trip to the cabin is taking me up a little earlier than normal and with the high water, I'm not sure I'll see any weeds. I'm looking for advice on what approach or bait might work for pike. Deeper/Shallower? Our most successful bait has always been a Mepps inline spinner, size 3 or 4, orange and black or brown and black Does that translate for the time year? Thanks for the advice!

spring is definitely a more challenging time of year then summer or fall, specifically THIS spring. been a tough go and I have certainly had no luck with any good sized fish. however this past weekend and the weather it brought changed things some, right up to Saturday evening it was slow, water temps were 60-63 depending where you were, that changed and when it hit the mid 60's it seemed to turn on, we are catching a good number of pike although many small {up to about 3lbs} also noticed another thing change this past weekend, up until sunday evening we had no top water pike hits at all, that changed Monday morning, there are weeds coming in now and the gators seem to be moving shallower, anything from spinners, spinnerbaits, shallow minnow baits and top water have recently seemed to work while prior to that we were searching deeper water. just my take on our area. not sure exactly when you are planning to go but your normal strategy should yield fish.

Westarm - we were seeing some bigger girls cruising the shallows the first couple weeks of the season. South facing shorelines when the sun was out. No idea if/what they were eating though.. 'cause we didn't catch any pike.

Bite has been really slow so far at this end. Everything seems off with this high water. Even the panfish aren't hitting. A normal year at this time we would have cabbage coming up and a serious dragonfly hatch happening. Not yet... I have spent many days on the water over the years and this time of year I'm looking at everything as indicators to gauge the bite. And the only thing that's been on schedule has been the spring peepers, blackflies and mosquitoes.

Still fun though! I'll be out again on the weekend trying to figure it out.

Westarm - we were seeing some bigger girls cruising the shallows the first couple weeks of the season. South facing shorelines when the sun was out. No idea if/what they were eating though.. 'cause we didn't catch any pike.

Bite has been really slow so far at this end. Everything seems off with this high water. Even the panfish aren't hitting. A normal year at this time we would have cabbage coming up and a serious dragonfly hatch happening. Not yet... I have spent many days on the water over the years and this time of year I'm looking at everything as indicators to gauge the bite. And the only thing that's been on schedule has been the spring peepers, blackflies and mosquitoes.

Still fun though! I'll be out again on the weekend trying to figure it out.

i agree Northhunter, been a crazy unusual spring, and you are right on, the swarms of dragonflies are typically replacing the blackfly problem which I will take any day. lol

and yes, we have seen half a dozen big big fish, a couple could have been muskies.

not sure if you were able to get out sunday or Monday but things began to change with the pike bite, like a switch turned on they started hitting shallower, I spent a lot of time {probably an hour each time I went out} each day throwing topwater just to see when I would finally get hit, it took all the way until Monday morning before I got hit and it was almost right away, 3 casts I believe, I ended up getting 3 on top after days of zero. I also got 4 sunday evening but NONE on top, inline spinner and a spinnerbait on those 4.

I can say this though, leading up to the pike finally hitting with some regularity, frustration would send us to our walleye holes and they didn't disappoint in fact it was easier to find pike that way as we caught a few jigging.

Paddy.. not always like that, but I've experienced it more than once. Ran into it with walleye out on west bay couple years ago. We fished all afternoon until dark. Early in the day we fished an island shoreline that produced, we spent some time there and moved on. We fished all over. Most of it very promising looking water. We barely got a hit. We had time for one last spot and we made our way back to the same island that produced several hours earlier and got back into fish. They were still there. Not much anywhere else.